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Reviewed Title: Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essentlal Christian Practice by Steven Bouma-Prediger. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023. 224 pp. ISBN: 9781540966322

Ploegstra, Jeff

Dordt Digital Collections 
Faculty Work Comprehensive List 
4-10-2024 
Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential 
Christian Practice (Book Review) 
Jeff Ploegstra 
Dordt University, jeff.ploegstra@dordt.edu 
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(Book Review). Reformed Journal Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faculty_work/1498 
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Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice 
(Book Review) 
Abstract 
Reviewed Title: Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essentlal Christian Practice by Steven 
Bouma-Prediger. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023. 224 pp. ISBN: 9781540966322. 
Keywords 
book review, Creation Care Discipleship, earthkeeping, essential, Christian practice, Steven Bouma-
Prediger 
Disciplines 
Christianity 
Comments 
Online access to book review: 
https://reformedjournal.com/creation-care-discipleship-why-earthkeeping-is-an-essential-christian-
practice/ 
This book review is available at Dordt Digital Collections: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faculty_work/1498 
 
Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice 
Steven Bouma-Prediger 
Published by Baker Academic in 2023 
Every spring, around graduation time, my family goes dumpster diving at the nearby 
university.  Our intent is not to acquire, but rather to reduce waste and provide low-cost 
clothing, bedding, small appliances, and household goods for our community by donating 
cleaned and repaired items to our local second-hand stores. Over the years, I have been 
disturbed by the steadily increasing amount of waste and the cost and quality of items 
being discarded. This has gone hand-in-hand with an increase in the square footage per 
student in the dorms. Rooms that 20 years ago held 6-7 students now hold 4. Formerly, 
many students did not have a car for their first year or two; in the last few years I have seen 
students drive from one end of campus to the other and many students use electric 
scooters to get around campus rather than walk.  
It is amazing to me how quickly we normalize changes like these. It simply becomes the 
water we swim in to throw away microwaves and mini-fridges that were new 4 years ago. 
That, rather than wash and donate the bedding and clothes we don’t want to transport to 
our next residence, we just throw them away. The hopeful side of me thinks that if we can 
this quickly normalize increases in waste and per person consumption, maybe we can 
normalize reductions as well. The more realistic side recognizes that these increases have 
happened during the same period of time that we have become increasingly aware of the 
damage we are doing to the earth and the risks that this damage presents. 
We need a reset; a reframing, reordering, reorienting, redefining. A remembering. In his 
latest book, Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian 
Practice, Steven Bouma-Bouma Prediger presents us with a clear and concise argument 
that such a reset is no more and no less than embracing a holistic vision of discipleship. He 
draws the reader into a deeper understanding of who we are and who we are intended to be 
as disciples of Christ, the Logos[1], through whom and for whom all things were created[2]. 
In the first chapter, Bouma-Prediger presents several convincing arguments as to why this 
book is important and provides a succinct overview of the rest of the book. The chapter 
opens with an exposition of Luke 4:14-30. Here we are presented with Jesus announcing 
himself as God’s anointed messenger, sent to “proclaim and enact the Year of Jubilee.” 
(pg.2). This work is “not only about justice for the oppressed but also about caring for 
animals both domestic and wild. It is not only about liberty for the incarcerated but also 
about cultivating sustainable farms. It is not only about rest for human laborers but also 
about rest for the land.” (pg.3) Bouma-Prediger argues that disciples of Jesus should be 
interested in the same work that Jesus was about. 
He goes on to argue that we have forgotten that the earth is the Lord’s, a divinely created 
and ordered whole to be cherished, cared for, and celebrated, rather than a morally 
neutral, unsacred set of resources for us to exploit. Remembering – 
literally reconnecting ourselves to our responsibility – is not only an essential part of 
connecting to our Creator, but also to each other. Our forgetting is at the heart of many of 
our social, physical, and environmental problems. Perceiving our relationship to creation 
as a one-way street impoverishes us spiritually and physically. It is an egocentric and 
anthropocentric view of the world that is fundamentally at odds with our professed 
Christocentric and servant-hearted faith. 
Further, he argues that this is a poor witness from a church who claims a cosmic, loving 
Creator. Christians should be leading in Earth-keeping, rather than skeptical and marginal 
participants in ecologically informed cultivation, restoration, and conservation. 
The remainder of this short chapter is dedicated to explaining the title of the book and 
laying out the structure of the chapters. He explores the definitions of several key words 
often associated with Earthkeeping and explains why many of the words we use fail us in 
our arguments for the integral nature of Earthkeeping as part of our discipleship.  
He includes one of my favorite quotes from Wendell Berry; an argument against the use of 
the word environment, “…But ‘environmental’ means that which surrounds or encircles us; 
it means a world separate from ourselves, outside us. The real state of things, of course, is 
far more complex and intimate and interesting than that. The world that environs us, that is 
around us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of 
our bone and flesh of our flesh. It is also Creation, a holy mystery, made for and to some 
extent by creatures, some but by no means all of whom are humans…” 
This first chapter is critically important for understanding the book as a whole. It sets the 
tone for the remainder of the book and clarifies the trajectory of the chapters. Without it, 
the chapters and meditations would have a strong tendency to feel a bit choppy. Bouma-
Prediger describes the book as a kind of distillation of many talks and lectures that he has 
given and it has a bit of that feel. It is a densely packed resource full of expositions of key 
passages of scripture, elegantly stated arguments from diverse authors, and clearly 
developed positions and perspectives.  
Chapter 2 presents a biblical vision of Earthkeeping through a series of short stories and 
reflections drawn from both New and Old Testament texts.  
Chapter 3 is an obvious follow-up with ethical and theological reflections based in the 
broad Christian tradition exploring themes of creatureliness, sanctification, restoration, 
and completion. 
Chapter 4 is an ecumenical buffet of Earthkeeping perspectives from around the world.  
Chapter 5 calls us to informed and skillful practice. 
Chapter 6 closes with “…our calling to follow Jesus as aching visionaries who joyfully work 
to bear witness to God’s great good future of shalom.” 
This last chapter was particularly refreshing for me. It reminds us that “Shalom is nothing 
less than the creation-wide realization of God’s intention that all things flourish.” Bouma-
Prediger cares about words. If that word, shalom, has become trite or cliched for you, you 
need to read this chapter. It will return the word to you renewed.  
As in his other books, nothing in his use of scripture feels forced. Bouma Prediger is a 
careful exegete who extensively references his writing and connects ideas and themes to a 
broad selection of Christian writers and thinkers from across time, genres, disciplines, and 
geography.  
This book could serve well as part of a church education program, within an environmental 
studies course, or simply for personal reading – though I expect the author would 
encourage communal engagement. This book is easily taken in pieces, yet coherent and 
organized. The frequent use of stories, the clear and focused language, and the frequent 
and descriptive headings within the chapters make it very accessible. The book is focused 
and concise, but it is clear where to go if you want more. 
 
[1] John 1:1 
[2] Colossians 1:16 
 


English

Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice (Book Review)

This study establishes bounds on the leading-order (LO) hadronic vacuum polarization (HVP) contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (HVP,LO  , =( −2)∕2) by using Hölder’s inequality and related inequalities in Finite-Energy QCD sum rules. Considering contributions from light quarks (, , ) up to five-loop order in perturbation theory within the chiral limit, leading-order light-quark mass corrections, next-to-leading order for dimension-four QCD condensates, and leading-order for dimension-six QCD condensates, the study finds QCD lower and upper bounds as (657.0±34.8)×10−10 ≤HVP,LO  ≤(788.4±41.8)×10−10

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Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice (Book Review)

Bounds on HVP,LO Using Hölder’s Inequalities and Finite-Energy QCD Sum Rules

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